Red Hot Chili Peppers sell music catalogue to Warner Music Group for $300m

Red Hot Chili Peppers have sold their recorded music catalogue to Warner Music Group in a deal worth more than $300million (£220million).

The band will now give up control of all of their master recordings to the label, with whom they have been signed since 1991’s ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik’, allowing Warners to collect all future income generated by streaming, radio play, sales and licensing.

It follows on from a previous deal that the band struck with Hipgnosis – who now go by Recognition Music Group – to sell the publishing rights to their music for a reported $140million (£102million).

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the new deal has reportedly been financed through a joint venture between Warner Music Group and the investment firm Bain Capital, which launched a $1.2billion (£880million) fund last year to acquire high-profile music catalogues.

The Chili Peppers’ catalogue is thought to generate roughly $26million (£19million) per year and until now, those rights have been controlled by the members of the band.

Their last studios albums ‘Unlimited Love’ and ‘Return Of The Dream Canteen’ were both released in 2022 and were both commercially successful, with both landing in the top three in both the US and UK albums charts.

Many big name musicians have been selling their back catalogues and publishing rights to such companies in recent years. In 2021, Bruce Springsteen signed a deal worth approximately $500million for his entire music library, while Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks, Neil Young, Deftones and Jack White have made similar deals.

More recently, Slipknot sold their catalogue to HarbourView Equity Partners for $120million, while other recent deals include Pink Floyd for $400million, as well as Queen, KISS, Britney Spears and Tame Impala.

In other news, the Netflix documentary The Rise Of The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel, which focused on the early history of the band and in particular the first guitarist Hillel Slovak, premiered last month.

While the band were interviewed for the film, they went out of their way to distance themselves from the project. Despite that, Flea spoke positively about the film, describing it as “a beautifully made film” that “filled my heart right to the top, not without a good dose of lifelong melancholy”.

Frontman Anthony Kiedis’ girlfriend Eileen Kelly recently wrote about the benefits of their age-gap relationship, calling him “one lucky bastard”.